


An Absent God

by Mr_Customs_Man



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Gen, Infant Death, Miscarriage, Religious Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-10
Updated: 2015-11-10
Packaged: 2018-05-01 00:30:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5185349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mr_Customs_Man/pseuds/Mr_Customs_Man
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anders cannot rage against an absent god, so he’ll rage against Sebastian instead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Absent God

The baby had stopped moving but Anders couldn’t bring himself to put her down. He traced a finger across her cool, yellow cheek. Too small, her complexion jaundiced and sickly. Anders knew she hadn’t been long for this world the moment he laid eyes on her.

He pressed the tiny body closer to his chest before standing up. Gently, he laid the girl inside the limp arms of her mother, tucking them around the tiny child like he imagined she would have done if they had lived. Anders frowned as he stared at the woman’s waxy face. Her eyes had opened again, her filmy irises staring unblinkingly up at him. It didn’t matter.

Sebastian will come for the bodies in the morning.

He should get some sleep. It felt like days since he had last laid down. Instead, he went over to his makeshift desk and worked on his manifesto. _If the Maker blamed magic for the fall of the Golden City then why would He allow us to keep our abilities? Why has He not rid mankind of magic once and for all?_ , he wrote. _Why does it matter what He thinks at all? He abandoned us. Nothing we do will bring him back._

“Anders?”

Anders blinked and looked up. His candle wasn’t anything more than a stub and there was Sebastian looking at him with a strange expression on his face. They all looked at him like that now. Like they thought he was slipping. He wasn’t. He just hadn’t realized how much time had passed. “I’ll be there in a moment,” he said and Sebastian nodded, turning his attention back to the bodies.

Anders poured some water into a basin and splashed it across his face in an attempt to wake up. Sebastian got to work laying out the burial shroud. Neither of them said anything. Why bother? They didn’t like each other, couldn’t agree on anything- well, except for this. Most people who died in Darktown were either pushed off the edge into the ocean or left in the dirt to rot. His patients deserved better.

Anders wiped his face clean and moved towards the bodies. He grasped the woman’s bare feet while Sebastian took her shoulders and on the count of three they lifted and placed her on top of the shroud. There was no fear of the baby slipping free of her grasp. Rigor had turned their bodies to stone.

He stepped back, his part over, and let the priest do his job. Sebastian wrapped them in the white sheet, whispering a near silent prayer with each turn of his hand. When he finished he looked up. “Their names?” He asked.

Anders shrugged. “Not a regular. First time I saw her was when she stumbled in here last night. Too busy dealing with premature labor to bother asking for a name.”

Sebastian nodded, but said nothing else, just continued his prayer, half-muttered underneath his breath. Anders narrowed his eyes and felt a rage burn through chest, clawing up his throat, and pushing out words before he even realized what was happening. “How can you have so much faith?” He demanded. “Does nothing bother you? The Maker left us to our own devices generations ago. He’s never going to step back in, start listening to our prayers. He’s gone. Doesn’t that bother you?”

Sebastian looked at him with something akin to pity and Anders burned hotly at the sight. He could stand anything, except pity. “He’s a merciful lord,“ Sebastian countered. “He could have destroyed our world when we failed Him, but instead He gave us a chance at redemption.”

“How is this redemption!” Anders all but screamed, gesturing wildly to the bodies in front of them. “She never had a chance! Neither of them did!”

“We have to put our trust in the Maker. There is a reason to this, even if we can’t see it.”

“A reason!? Their lives should have been reason enough! They are more than just the playthings of some absentee god!”

Sebastian’s expression slowly hardened against his ravings. _Good_ , Anders thought harshly. _I don’t want your pity or your kindness_. He was a fool. Anders wanted to press Sebastian’s face against a mirror until he finally realized it. He wanted to bring him down into the dirt with the rest of them. How dare he act so high and mighty. The Maker did not care about Sebastian anymore than he cared about Anders and the mage was going to prove it to him.

“Is that how you feel?” Sebastian finally asked. There was a hard, sharp glint to his blue eyes. “That you are the Maker’s plaything? Or are you afraid that you aren’t important enough to Him to be even that?”

Something inside Anders froze at the words. He wondered at his expression because Sebastian suddenly dropped his gaze, his mouth twisting with remorse. “I’ll get the cart. We’ll take them to Potter’s Pyre.”

Sebastian left quickly and Anders dropped into a chair. There was a spirit living inside him, and somehow he still felt empty and alone.


End file.
